Reader’s request: The Trump Show

I know what you’re thinking. This is a sports blog. So why am I getting into the murky waters of the Republican presidential nomination?

A few reasons. A reader asked me to and I’m very obliging. Plus, the Don is not without his sporting connections.

And try telling any writer with an eye for humour to stay away from this fiasco. David Letterman even briefly came out of retirement to fry him.

“I was complacent, I was satisfied, I was content,” lamented Letterman. “And then a couple of days ago Donald Trump said he was running for president. I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life.”

Jon Stewart was six weeks away from leaving his TV show when Trump, or Clownstick as he prefers to call him, announced his candidacy. Stewart thought all his Christmases had come at once.

So I’m all snouts in the comedic trough on this one.

And here’s my theory. Donald Trump reckons he’s in a giant reality TV show. He’s a reverse Truman Show. No one’s told him this is real life and that the prize is potentially the actual leadership of the free world.

Look at the way he’s following the classic reality TV formula, mastered after headlining who knows how many seasons of The Apprentice. He’s the car crash contestant. The one who shoots from the lip, hogs all the attention and spooks the other horses in the race. Welcome to Presidential Apprentice.

To be fair, amid the hyperbole about how rich and good looking he is and how he’ll be “the greatest jobs president God ever created”, there have been a few actual policy announcements.

For one, he’s never going in a bike race. Yes, it’s an iron-clad promise that there will be no lycra-clad President in a Trump administration. A not insubstantial commitment, a promise like that would be an election turner in Australia.

“This thing is too hard to comb,” he admits. “I wouldn’t have time, because if I were in the White House, I’d be working my ass off. I would probably comb my hair back.”

The hair. The businessman’s mullet. A concoction that resembles your kid’s first attempt to fashion something out of Play-doh. Jon Stewart calls it ‘comedy entrapment’.

Yes, it’s proof that money doesn’t buy good taste. Everything about the Don is proof of that. But it’s also his alter ego. They’ve been through thick and increasingly thinner together. Can you imagine him without it?

I mean, what would he do for a funny line? Oh, that’s right, he’s running for President.